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If you're not sure where to start when looking for the next multi-bagger, there are a few key trends you should keep an eye out for. One common approach is to try and find a company with returns on capital employed (ROCE) that are increasing, in conjunction with a growing amount of capital employed. This shows us that it's a compounding machine, able to continually reinvest its earnings back into the business and generate higher returns. So on that note, Ansell (ASX:ANN) looks quite promising in regards to its trends of return on capital.
Return On Capital Employed (ROCE): What Is It?
Just to clarify if you're unsure, ROCE is a metric for evaluating how much pre-tax income (in percentage terms) a company earns on the capital invested in its business. Analysts use this formula to calculate it for Ansell:
Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)
0.12 = US$254m ÷ (US$2.5b - US$360m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2022).
Therefore, Ansell has an ROCE of 12%. In absolute terms, that's a satisfactory return, but compared to the Medical Equipment industry average of 9.8% it's much better.
See our latest analysis for Ansell
Above you can see how the current ROCE for Ansell compares to its prior returns on capital, but there's only so much you can tell from the past. If you'd like, you can check out the forecasts from the analysts covering Ansell here for free.
What The Trend Of ROCE Can Tell Us
Ansell is showing promise given that its ROCE is trending up and to the right. Looking at the data, we can see that even though capital employed in the business has remained relatively flat, the ROCE generated has risen by 39% over the last five years. So our take on this is that the business has increased efficiencies to generate these higher returns, all the while not needing to make any additional investments. The company is doing well in that sense, and it's worth investigating what the management team has planned for long term growth prospects.
Our Take On Ansell's ROCE
In summary, we're delighted to see that Ansell has been able to increase efficiencies and earn higher rates of return on the same amount of capital. Since the stock has only returned 26% to shareholders over the last five years, the promising fundamentals may not be recognized yet by investors. Given that, we'd look further into this stock in case it has more traits that could make it multiply in the long term.
If you want to continue researching Ansell, you might be interested to know about the 2 warning signs that our analysis has discovered.